Page 38 of Duality

“Water first,” he grunted.

“You know…” I said as I took my seat at the table. “I am a fully functioning adult who has taken care of herself her entire life. I can drink coffee whenever I feel like it.”

Sebastian just grinned as he set down a glass of water in front of me. “We know you can take care of yourself, my darling Evie, but that doesn’t mean you have to.”

I frowned at him, but he only grinned wider. He was saved from my response by Alexander setting down a steaming tray in the center of the table. Steam rose from the bubbling lasagna, and my eyes widened. It smelled heavenly.

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at Alexander. “Who told you?”

I had money on it being Danny who had told them that lasagna was my favorite. Danny had been surprisingly Team Stone from the beginning, which had shocked me. He was usually the one scaring guys away, not that he really had to; I was scary enough. But Danny had been all but throwing us together at every turn. In fact, he had ushered out my other lieutenants earlier this afternoon to go “take care of things.” Just because we were protecting the guys, it didn’t mean that there weren’t others in the city who needed our help. But with the hit out on the guys, we had scaled back our other cases. It killed me, but I couldn’t let anyone else become a target.

Alexander arched an eyebrow at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It was definitely Danny. Still, I didn’t protest as Alexander served me a large portion of lasagna and a slice of crispy garlic bread. Fine, I would allow the occasional house guest, as long as they cooked like this for me.

“How much longer will Liam’s program take to sort through the documents?” Marcus asked once we were all eating.

“At least another forty-eight hours,” Sebastian said, mumbling around a bite of food, his words practically intelligible.

Alexander shot him an exasperated look, and I ducked my head to hide my smile.

“Ow,” Sebastian yelped and jumped as Marcus glared at him. “Fuck, fine! Forty-eight hours,” he said more clearly.

Alexander groaned and rested his head in his hands. “Can you all stop acting like children for just one dinner?”

“It does seem to be their default setting,” I agreed, a smirk on my lips. I couldn’t deny that they brought a certain lightness into the house.

“My darling, Evie, I can assure you that I’m all man.” Sebastian waggled his eyebrows.

“That remains to be seen,” I shot back.

“But you want to see it?” Sebastian’s grin was victorious.

“That is not what I meant,” I backpedaled. I did not mean I wanted to see him naked. Without clothes on his gorgeous body?—

Focus, Evelyn. Seeing your bosses naked would be bad. Right?

“Can we focus?” Marcus grumbled. “Quit fucking around.”

Both Sebastian and I glared at him. He really needed to pull that stick out of his ass before I did it for him, then beat him over the head with it.

“Anyway…” Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Liam said his program will take another forty-eight hours. He’s really built a sweet program. He’s an impressive hacker. We should consider hiring him for some SDS work. He could review our systems.”

Oh, hell no.

“He’s one of mine. Don’t poach my people.” I glared at him. It was one thing that they knew who I was, who we were, and that they were in my house and forcing me to drink water. It was another thing to try to hire my people away.

“They could beourpeople,” Sebastian said.

Our people? What the fuck was he talking about? Did he think the Archers would merge with SDS after this? That was ridiculous and would never happen in a million years.

“Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes. “Don’t poach my people,” I delivered the warning again sternly.

Sebastian looked like he was going to say something else, but he yelped again. “Stop kicking me.” He glared at Marcus.

Adrian and Alexander swiftly changed the conversation to last night’s football game and other trivial topics around the office operations. I didn’t know how they could focus on anything else during all of this, but a part of me envied their ability to shut it off. Between the Archers and SDS, work had consumed me for the last few years and resulted in a lack of an off switch.

I probably should have been paying attention when they talked about SDS operations, but my brain was still on the documents I had just been reading. There had to be a clue in there somewhere; something that would tell us how Citadel knew inside information about the Archers. So far, all I had compiled was a list of companies Citadel did business with. There were a ton of them. Some I recognized and others I didn’t. Liam was working through the list of those I didn’t. Companies like Westbridge Consulting, Eagle Holdings, and Grayridge Solutions were probably shell companies, but we needed to look into them, even if it took up time and resources. We had to find the leak.